Fun facts: the UK has crazy laws protecting trees and hedgerows. There’s a national tree registry for old boys.

  • KillingTimeItself
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    191 year ago

    wait so, can i just deed the title of my land to my land upon my death? Is that something i can just fucking do?

    • @[email protected]
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      351 year ago

      As long as enough of town decides to go along with it. If the town decides you were a coot and would rather have a gas station, the tree is fucked.

      • KillingTimeItself
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        11 year ago

        i see. So basically i just gotta convince the local government that my land is now community land dedicated to third space activities, and owned by itself. I can troll generations for generations to come. Wonderful.

  • @[email protected]
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    351 year ago

    I do like the info, I’m failing to see the science aspect, and even the meme aspect of this post. But I’m in the ‘microblog doesn’t equal meme’ camp.

    • @[email protected]OPM
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      51 year ago

      I’m in the Dawkins definition of meme camp. Memes are a funny thing, pun intended. :)

      • Cethin
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        21 year ago

        Dawkin’s definition had nothing to do with humor. His definition was an idea that is spread through society. Its the intellectual equivalent to genes.

      • @[email protected]
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        61 year ago

        The ‘not science’ part is what irked me and I tagged that on for laughs and irrelevant discussion (as is the following I’m not mad, but like to dabble in pedantry today):

        But on that part, in the old days the dawkinsian meme was misappropriated to denote a specific image format. Of course it is a Dawkinsian one, too as it is a vector of ideas.

        Then it got misappropriated again as ‘any funny image on the internet’, including microblogs, like you seen to defend. You then use the argument that it’s a meme in the Dawkinsian manner (and you’d be technically correct).

        But using that logic anything in any medium is a meme. I could upload a Gilbert Gottfried narration of Atlas Shrugged, a clay tablet or the transcripts of all of money pythons movies and sketches. That would all be Dawkinsian memes, and debatebly funny, however not the kind the people here are interested in seeing.

        So in in the camp ‘a meme means an image with caption’ and not micro blogs, otherwise anything goes.

        Thanks for entertaining my diatribe.

    • @[email protected]
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      81 year ago

      I think conservation techniques can count as science. If it was a rare species, the science connection would be more obvious

  • 𝓔𝓶𝓶𝓲𝓮
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    1 year ago

    Is this outrage bait from other outrage bait forming an outrageception or ragechain or am I too long online today?

    Besides where are the scientists

  • @[email protected]
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    1 year ago

    I don’t think it’s crazy at all to protect trees. We need them. What baffles me is how much we rely on them and still cut whole swaths of them down anyway without a thought.

    • Deebster
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      111 year ago

      Study after study has shown that trees in cities offer huge benefits: offering shade and cooling (reducing energy consumption), draining storm/flood water (very useful in our more extreme climate), cleaning the air and emitting oxygen, homing wildlife, improving mental health by reducing anxiety and depression, being nice to look at.

      Every city tree should be treasured and protected.

    • @[email protected]OPM
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      1 year ago

      It boggles my mind we feel the need to box ecology and not consider agency for any of the other parts that make life itself possible.

  • @[email protected]
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    31 year ago

    Imagine denying other living and breathing lifeforms agency to thrive and change lol lol lol

    Like abortion? Thank goodness we repealed Roe Vs Wade

    • @[email protected]
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      1 year ago

      Fetuses aren’t living and don’t breathe. They can’t live on their own and all their chemicals come from another human being (via the umbilical cord). This is opposed to the tree, which isn’t reliant on a certain being and instead gets its nutrients by itself through its roots and get oxygen for respiration & carbon dioxide for photosynthesis by itself, not an umbilical cord.

      Trees are undeniably far more independent and living than a fetus. You’re kind of a weirdo for thinking some random small clump of cells is actually equivalent to a human child. I bet I could find basically the same thing in my back yard if I looked hard enough.

          • @[email protected]
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            11 year ago

            You could also cut down ppl, if they weren’t interdependent and interacting with each other enough to realise fast enough and start retaliating.
            One of the big factors making humans (and animals in general) have power over the trees is, that we are faster, both at action and adaptation, thanks to our superior mechanisms of Central Nervous System and Muscular systems.

            But at the same time, any single human would be much more dependent upon trees in general, as compared to how much a single tree would be, upon us, or other animals. Since the seed stage of the plant is sturdy enough to let it choose its starting point, all it really needs is for the place it chose to remain within a reasonable range of the germination conditions (soil, water, air, insolation quality etc.) and it will be just fine.

  • @[email protected]
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    1241 year ago

    The story of the Tree That Owns Itself is widely known and is almost always presented as fact. Only one person—the anonymous author of “Deeded to Itself”—has ever claimed to have seen Jackson’s deed to the tree. Most writers acknowledge that the deed is lost or no longer exists—if in fact it ever did exist. Such a deed would have no legal effect. Under common law, the recipient of a piece of property must have the legal capacity to receive it, and the property must be delivered to—and accepted by—the recipient.[6] Both are impossible for a tree to do, as it isn’t a legal person.

    […]

    “However defective this title may be in law, the public recognized it.”[11] In that spirit, it is the stated position of the Athens-Clarke County Unified Government that the tree, in spite of the law, does indeed own itself.[12] It is the policy of the city of Athens to maintain it as a public street tree.[13]

    […]

    Although the story of the Tree That Owns Itself is more legend than history, the tree has become, along with the University Arch and the Double-Barreled Cannon, one of the most recognized and well-loved symbols of Athens.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tree_That_Owns_Itself

    In reality, the tree is not protected by law, but by the will of the people. Kind of symbolic if you ask me.

    • @[email protected]OPM
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      1 year ago

      We should really have representatives for non humans in government that are meant to function at an economic loss/investment as a way of giving back. Too often these departments get pushed to deliver ecosystem services. We need to learn to give back without it being transactional. Make gift culture great again. Elect a Lorax.

      • Natanael
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        81 year ago

        It’s called environmental protection groups, animal rights groups, etc. Plenty don’t want to listen, though

          • @[email protected]
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            41 year ago

            Who is going to keep them accountable? Trees have a record high abstention rate, and if these representatives are elected by humans that’s just proportional voting with veneer on top.

            Democracy is about balancing levers, and that’s why there is more than one branch of government. Special interest groups do have power, and so does the judiciary (who may sue the government for unlawful cutting down of trees) and the executive (who may have power to declare certain government-owned land to be Protected).

            The real ecologist move would be to write a duty to protect the environment into the constitution, so that the judiciary can strike down any law that does anything to the contrary.

            • @[email protected]
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              1 year ago

              I believe at least one state—Wyoming, maybe—has a guarantee in its constitution that citizens will have a clean and healthy environment, or something along those lines. It effectively creates a duty to protect the environment.

              Edit: it’s Montana.

              • Almrond
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                11 year ago

                I was going to say, definitely not Wyoming. Too many oil and gas companies absolutely destroy the areas they are in. I lived in Edgerton for a bit, there is literally no potable water in town, you will make yourself incredibly sick drinking out of the tap because of the drilling in the area. That’s just one of very many examples.

      • @[email protected]
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        71 year ago

        I would argue most things in government should be ran in the black or red. There’s just a certain type of person who wants to turn everything Into a for profit.

    • Match!!
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      1051 year ago

      Nothing is protected by law, everything protected is by the will of the people

  • Ð Greıt Þu̇mpkin
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    11 year ago

    I’m pretty sure there’s a quirk in marriage and inheritance law that leads to a concept called a pregnant fetus

    • @[email protected]
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      251 year ago

      The ownership of land is an odd thing when you come to think of it. How deep, after all, can it go? If a person owns a piece of land, does he own it all the way down, in ever narrowing dimensions, till it meets all other pieces at the center of the earth? Or does ownership consist only of a thin crust under which the friendly worms have never heard of trespassing?

      -Tuck Everlasting

    • @[email protected]OPM
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      71 year ago

      Nah, more like rented their place until they could give back to the earth with the ultimate sacrifice.

        • @[email protected]
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          91 year ago

          Humans are bizarrely fond of stuffing their dead with preservatives, hermetically sealing them in a box, and/or incinerating them. Like, it’s our last chance to give a little bit back to nature, but nope.

            • Natanael
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              41 year ago

              With all the crap we put in ourselves it’s a good thing we slow down that process, like the casing of a slow action pill

  • @[email protected]
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    311 year ago

    Are they sure the original Tree that Owned Itself was the mother of the Son of the Tree that owned itself? Or did some whore squirrel just deposit the acorn near the stump?

    Have they done a DNA test to confirm that the son has a legal stake in the property?

    Now the son is young, dumb, and full of pollen. He’s gotta be spreading it as far as the wind will take it. What will happen when he inevitably dies and his estate has to be settled??

    • @[email protected]
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      1 year ago

      It generally doesn’t. You can create a trust for non-persons, but there are a bunch of rules about how it can be established, how long it can exist, etc.